Label: Mercury
Year of Release: 1966
Maybe it's a generational thing, but when I hear "beep beep, beep beep, yeah!" the first thing I think about isn't The Beatles "Drive My Car" - as it damn well should be - but Radio One's traffic news jingle from the eighties. You know, the one which cheerily went "Traffic neee-eews, on Radio Wuh-hu-hun!" while various motorists probably seethed in frustration out there in the real world (it's on YouTube if you really want to relive those bygone days).
This is stupid of me, because while it was never a Beatles single, "Drive My Car" was a well-known and highly appreciated number, included on many of their compilations, including the cheapo MFP release "Rock and Roll Music" I owned myself on cassette. It just wasn't such an ever-present feature as Radio One's persistent jingles.
The BBC obviously weren't the only people to realise the track's potency, though, and the mysterious Pineapple Chunks took the long-favoured sixties route of recording a careful cover of a Beatles album track in the hope chart success would follow. With a tailwind behind it and the right production, the song of course could have become a smash - this probably isn't quite what the doctor ordered, though. The Chunks deliver it smoothly, gleefully and competently, but the driving, clopping rhythm and the occasional bursts of wildness on the Fabs original are obliterated here, replaced by something calmer and less edgy. It's not a bad performance, but the rhythm section in particular undersell the song; say what you want about Ringo Starr, but this is evidence that the man really did know what to do with Beatle tunes.
The flipside "Dream About You" is more interesting, having an almost garage rock feel to it, with a droning organ riff sitting beneath the band's vocal harmonies and a twitchy, hyperactive but steady beat.
Who were they? Search me. After this single flopped Mercury obviously didn't give them another chance, and this appears to have been the only performance of theirs to make its way into the record shops. An acetate of a song entitled "I Cried" also bears their name and is apparently a freakbeat number, but all traces of it appear to have disappeared online now. If you know more, please do drop me a comment.
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